Away - 2 to 6 November
It’s a fun time of year with Halloween trick or treating swiftly followed by Bonfire Night over at Bole Hills.
Work week
First two days were mainly recruitment. I got to speak to some excellent service designers about working in our team, and someone will be starting early next month.
Thursday was our long trailed team away day. It’s been a while since we got together and it’s always really valuable. We also met our new business analyst, who seems ace.
In one of the morning sessions I ran the game that my colleague and I have been making, The Allotment at the End of the World. For a first ever playthrough, it went really well. There was lots of teamwork, some betrayals, and coping with sudden events like an earthquake and a hellmouth opening.
Everyone enjoyed playing, and maybe learned some new (and concerning) things about their colleagues. I should write up the design process at some point.
After lunch we set up our walkable prototype of a ‘Digital and Data Profession Department Store’ in a corner of the office. We invited in people and gave them ‘capability’-related tasks to try and complete, sending them off down the aisles signposted with our various team names (paper signs).
This was the first user research activity in the discovery. We wanted to get see how people responded to our ‘as is’ organisational structure, and learn where journeys cross teams or where people get confused or uncertain. The results should help us start designing by reflecting people’s mental models when it comes to making decisions about careers in the profession.
From my content point of view it was so valuable to see both the overall journeys people took, and also hear them talk about what they were thinking. It was also a bit of a statement to our colleagues. We’re going to try to do things a bit differently so that we can learn new things.
Finished the week by travelling to Bristol for Simple Things Festival at the weekend. Gave me time to finally get started with reading Dan Hill’s book, Dark Matter and Trojan Horses. I’m making a ton of notes.
Reading
How does content design fit into the wider process of designing a service? - Ray Newman
Service design needs to change - Andy Parker
Does AI speed up development? Using the GDS Service Standard as a testing ground - Giuseppe Sollazzo
Patient data should be designed for patients too - Steve Messer